Discussion Topic

Maybe the village had experienced violence and crime from out-of-towners, were expecting more trouble, and were alert and ready to fight back? Their response sounds like some kind of third-world Neighborhood Watch scenario.

Yeah, that sounds plausible--you really have to watch it when you see a group consisting of 1 guy and two girls masquerading as being on a long camping trip roll into your town--who knows what havoc they could wreak? Sending in the two girls would be a good "advance scouting team" for the invaders waiting in the wings.

Always interesting (if fairly predictable) to see people's reactions to these types of things. Everything from the "the ugly Americans started it" (seemingly implausible if you believe the account, and if you don't believe it, how could you have any opinion at all?) to the "this is from centuries of gringo oppression."
I'm of the I'm-surprised-this-doesn't-happen-more-often school, but I freely admit that is pure conjecture.

I think the proper protocol is to hire a local guide, to take you through the rough areas.

Have fun negotiating costs on that one, and see what path you take and who you meet along the way and what the police think when they find out your "tour guide" from two villages away isn't officially registered locally in some weird way.

It's interesting that the majority (by far) of anthropologists never get attacked and/or robbed. An acquaintance of mine lived with modern day (automatic weapons equipped) headhunters in the Phillipines, never got held up once.

When I was in Argentina two years ago we met a bunch of people who had driven
all the way down there with no problems other than bad roads, etc. The
people in this story had too much Kumbaya in the gas tank and, at that,
were running on fumes.

A fellow worker of mine grew up in a small village in Yugoslavia. The Germans had not exactly been the most behaved guests during their stay in that village. He told me that shortly after the war some poor schmuck drove into the village in a Mercedes. He was pulled from his German car by a mob and beaten to death. His crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a German car.

Latin America = giant sh#t hole. In the best case, always having to think about how the next person is going to try to get your money and how you're going to try to prevent it - non-fuking stop 24/7 game until you're on a plane out of the country - it gets old. No thanks - did some trips, saw everything I wanted to see, never going back

The story makes no sense. I assume they were trespassing and when told to leave, the people of the village didn't think they were leaving. Peru is one of the safest countries there is for tourists. They're lucky they got through Colombia without getting into even worse trouble.